CITY AND SUBURBAN
The mandarin who could not fit into Hong Kong's pecking order
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
THong Kong
he mightiest mandarin of all has slip- ped through Hong Kong's fingers. This is Sir Peter Middleton, who has just stood down after eight years at the head of the Treasury. I learn that determined efforts were made to get him to come out as Financial Secretary. That job, under Hong Kong's distinctive system of government, could be said to double the roles of Permanent Secretary and Chancellor. The present holder, Sir Piers Jacobs, is soon to retire. He is an agreeable lawyer who came up through the administration, and is now in a rough patch — after a budget which hoisted the price of tobacco, and a mini- budget which lowered it again because of what it did to the rate of inflation. Old hands pine for the days of Sir Philip Haddon Cave, the Financial Secretary whose policy grew more severe as his speeches grew longer — though he did not, as Sir Piers must, have to finance himself in markets where the long term meant six years ahead. Hence the urge to recruit a successor of Sir Peter Middleton's calibre. At the Treasury he made it his business to keep a watchful eye on Hong Kong, with its unique power to rock sterling and the London financial markets. He has been a regular visitor — but will not be the incumbent. I gather that his terms could not be agreed. What they might have been is a matter for inference, but I can imagine the difficulty of fitting him into an official colonial pecking order, where the Gov- ernor, Sir David Wilson, is guaranteed first peck. For Hong Kong, a missed chance at a critical moment. Now Sir Peter is off to be chairman of Barclays de Zoete Wedd, and the next Financial Secretary is to be Hamish Macleod, who was the in-house candidate.
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